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Mervy King has revealed, for the first time, that last autumn the Bank of England provided up to £62 billion in short term loans to RBS and HBOS in almost complete secrecy. This just goes to show how dire the situation was, and certainly reinforces the argument for a radical shake-up of banking regulations. If things reach a point where banks require staggeringly huge loans from the taxpayer, but without the taxpayer’s knowledge, no sane person could claim that business should be allowed to continue as usual. As Edmund Conway points out in the Telegraph, it’s also astonishing that these loans managed to go completely unnoticed by the news media, which at the time was scrutinising the financial...